The Covid-19 induced global crisis has now lasted for more than a year. We have seen different phases in how societies reacted to the challenge: the delayed acknowledgement of the scale of the threat, the following state of shock, the first national, then growingly transnational efforts to regain control over the pandemic development, the wave-like pattern of infections that resulted from repeated lock-downs and re-openings.
Throughout all these phases, scientific expertise has played a central role by informing the public and advising politics, by developing vaccines and therapeutics as well as simulating future developments. At the same time, we have to concede not yet having realized the full potential of what the scientific community at large can provide to societies in a crisis like this.
More than twelve months into the global pandemic, we collected voices from all over academia to mobilize this full potential. It thought it high time to leave behind the tunnel visions, short-term perspectives, and reactive attitudes of the initial state of shock and provide a collective, comprehensive, pro-active, and long-term perspective. Thus, we addressed fellow scientists worldwide with three overarching themes:
The aggregated and comparative analysis of 81 responses provided by colleagues working in Brazil, China, India, Canada, the USA, Germany and Austria (among other countries), affiliated with the social sciences, the humanities and arts, the natural, engineering and life sciences, hints at cumulative negative effects of the pandemic and its management; it points at learning opportunities for responsible climate policies and digitalisation, and shows strong support of members of the academic community for paradigm changes in various sectors of society.
Three years ago, the sudden onset of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged academia just like any other societal field, while at the same time putting science center stage. Media attention tended to focus on particular disciplines, such as epidemiology and microbiology, and on individual, mostly local, experts. Based on the idea that science as a global, multidisciplinary community has something to offer society beyond the highly specialized output of individual research fields prepared for local, short-term perspectives, the Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences launched a spontaneous expert survey in June 2021 with a global and interdisciplinary aspiration, addressing three non-standard issues related to the pandemic and its management: side effects, opportunities, and preparedness. In this paper, we present our methodology and the results of our analysis. We conclude with a discussion of potential contributions of technology assessment in times of sudden, global crises.
-> Die ÖAW hat eine Expert*innenbefragung zur gegenwärtigen Pandemie durchgeführt: Dabei ging es neben den kritischen Nebeneffekten auch um Chancen und Möglichkeiten für eine positive Veränderung. -> Rückmeldungen kamen aus allen Fachkulturen und von vier Kontinenten. -> Die Ergebnisse: Die Pandemie und der Umgang mit ihr hatten weitereichende Auswirkungen. Für viele ist es ein Aufruf zu einem wertebasierten Paradigmenwechsel in Produktion und Verbrauch, zu internationaler Zusammenarbeit und zur Erneuerung von Politik, Gesundheitswesen und Wissenschaft.
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker)
Kastenhofer, K. (Speaker), Friesacher, H. R. ((Co-)Author), Reich, A. ((Co-)Author) & Capari, L. ((Co-)Author)
